wake up call

Recently I felt like I had a wake up call around my role as a Story Teller and the player’s handling of their characters. My “win conditions” in gaming were to tell a good, if not great, story. But it started me thinking more and more about why gaming would be the way I expressed myself. Why shouldn’t I just sit down and write a piece of fiction? Why not break out the animation tools and make a story come to life? Why shouldn’t I grab a video camera and write out some scripts and make a short film? Why do it with a bunch of other guys and gals around a table every Saturday night? What was it about this medium that attracted me?

The players I worked with seemed fond of my stories and the gaming aspects. In a traditional setting all the players would give me detailed backgrounds for their characters and I would attempt to weave in elements of their histories into my plot. Some of this would be overt and some of it more subtle. However I was finding that it was difficult to keep in mind that character “A” had a paralyzing fear of water and character “B” has lost his mother in a freak railroad accident. The result was that these bits of flavor that the players kindly offered to me were lost in actual game play. After all, they should be figuring out a way to get past the guards, into the attic, and inside that trunk. That’s the story I’m telling, not your silly mother’s lack of foresight regarding train schedules and villainous land lords.

But then something changed. I’m not sure if it was just me taking a First Step and admitting that I was powerless over the plot or something simpler. On a whim I asked the players to reveal their entire character’s background to all the other players. This had amazing results. I don’t just mean that they talked about “Bob is from back east and likes dogs”. They revealed advantages, disadvantages, secrets and inner demons. This came out in play as them reminding each other about how facing the roundabout train station might give them the willies considering what happened to their mother. It came out as enforcement of disadvantages that might simply be unpleasant for the player to consider. Most of all it came out as a group effort to breathe life into the characters that was never present before. It was as if I lifted up the cover just a peek and a torrent of creativity came pouring out. My players were actually helping me uncover plot twists and developments that I would not have thought of. They were discovering their character’s voice quicker and deeper. They were getting to explore a more realistic life for their characters and the result was that we collective started creating a better story.

I’m pulling my players more and more into the co-creation process. I’ve still got a plot that is being revealed session by session, but it’s no longer difficult to remember the nuances of the character’s background. Instead the story is about them and the place they live in. I present a series of dilemmas but they grow with these experiences and not just “win” a skill roll or gain points to spend on better skills. The experience is much less passive for the players and much more hand’s free for me. It lets me focus on the story in ways I never thought of.

Then I start finding out that the thriving Indie RPG community are starting to turn their eyes towards new ways of thinking about RPGs and table top gaming in particular. One of the biggest trends is to involve the players much more in the mechanics of the game. This means, in some cases, doing away with the traditional roles of GM and character. Everybody is a GM and everybody is a character. When plot points are presented there are mechanics in place to allow a character to veto the result and suggest an alternative. In many ways this is what lies at the heart of the gaming experience. I suggest that the zombie attempts to bite off your character’s face and you roll dice, compare the results to your “save face” skill, and inform me that you were either able to dodge the bite or are watching in horror as a zombie swallows down what was once your low lip. But what we are talking about here is above and beyond a skill check based experience. We are talking about core elements of the story line being altered so that maximum satisfaction is generated for all the players involved. In some systems I could even see that all players control all the characters.

This is so far away from how I’ve played in the past that I can’t begin to fathom it. However, I’m so flushed by my recent successes that I’m almost tempted to start incorporating more and more elements into our game that will allow more and more player participation. Why not had over an NPCs full character sheet and just hang onto gems of background that need to be uncovered over time? The possibilities are intriguing.